Al-Qaida Scattered but Dangerous

DAFNA LINZER

Published
9:00 pm EDT, Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Authorities believe the core of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network has been scattered and weakened by the U.S.-led war on terrorism but officials say the number of sympathizers eager to further the cause of Muslim holy war may be growing a year after the devastating attacks of Sept. 11.

While the strong U.S. military presence in Afghanistan crushed al-Qaida's presence there, U.S. counterterrorism officials say a large number of leaders moved into neighboring Pakistan. Some went into the cities, including bin Laden deputy Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Faisalabad in March. Others stayed in the remote mountain border area between the two countries.

Bin Laden's No. 2, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahri, was thought to be in that region as recently as last month, U.S. officials said. The al-Qaida leader's whereabouts are unknown and the U.S. government has said it does not know whether bin Laden is alive or dead.

About a dozen of his chief lieutenants have been killed or captured, but more than half have escaped. Officials have said that between 15 and 20 senior members of the group's leadership are still at large.

Some returned to their home countries of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Morocco. U.S. and foreign intelligence officials have said there is evidence some al-Qaida fugitives have migrated to Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported guerrilla group which targets Israel from Lebanon.

Foreign intelligence reports received by the United States have placed a few al-Qaida leaders in Iran, but it doesn't appear they are commanding operations. Al-Qaida's most active operational leaders now are believed to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom officials have identified as the mastermind behind Sept. 11, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Both men were thought to be operating in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said over the weekend that one of its correspondents had interviewed Mohammed and Sept. 11 fugitive Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan in June. The interview is scheduled to air on Thursday along with a videotape in which the station says bin Laden can be heard naming several of the Sept. 11 hijackers and discussing the attacks.

There is no way to verify whether the voice is indeed that of bin Laden or when the tape was made but U.S. intelligence and law enforcement say al-Qaida remains dangerous. The organization is still believed to be able to conduct attacks _ there have been at least two since Sept. 11 linked to al-Qaida, including the bombing of an ancient synagogue in Tunisia, and an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.

Several other plots have been foiled and officials say the war has made it more difficult for al-Qaida to communicate and move money around now that its Afghan base has been wiped out.

But the dispersal has led to what counterterrorism officials describe as a decentralized network of operatives, affiliate groups and individual cells turning to their own devices to plot attacks.

U.S. officials say the result may mean less spectacular and complicated plots than the Sept. 11 attacks, but experts warn the new situation could complicate the future of the war.

"They're split up, hard to reach and all over the world now," said Daniel Mulvenna, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in suburban Washington. "They've gone to places where they know the environments well, they can blend in and plan future attacks and I suspect they will."

Even worse, others say, is that the new situation gives al-Qaida's followers an opportunity to recruit in new places and strengthen ties with militant groups who enjoyed support from the network in the past. In the last year, members of a half dozen militant groups fighting for Muslim causes in Bosnia, Southeast Asia and North Africa have been arrested and linked to al-Qaida.

"It is a mistake to see the threat as merely coming from al-Qaida," said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's renowned anti-terror judge. "There are other groups. They may be loosely linked to al-Qaida, but they do not have the same chain of command, or the same chief."

There were similar assessments in Italy this week.

Stefano Dambruoso, the prosecutor leading the probe into bin Laden's operations in Italy, warned that new attacks could come from what he described as "free-lance" terrorists without direct connections to bin Laden's group.

"Al-Qaida as we knew it has been largely dismembered," Dambruoso told The Associated Press in an interview Monday in Milan. "But there are many frustrated Muslims in Europe who live on the fringes of society. They are close to fundamentalist groups but don't belong to any organization."

In the months following Sept. 11, U.S. counterterrorism officials tracked an upswing in al-Qaida recruiting as volunteers inspired by the attacks joined the cause, a U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. Sympathizers spot potential recruits at mosques, jails and religious schools, the official said, and then bring them into the fold.

Earlier this summer, FBI intelligence analysts began seeing signs that midlevel al-Qaida members were planning attacks while the group's leaders continued to hide from the U.S. military.

U.S. special forces have been scouring the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border for the past three months in search of suspected terrorist fighters and anti-government militiamen loyal to former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who may be forging an alliance with remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

It's not clear whether anyone of importance among al-Qaida remains in Afghanistan. But the U.S. operation appears to be fueling hostility, even among allies who complain the Americans have relied on faulty information that has caused injury and death to civilians.

That in turn is increasing support for militant organizations, including the Hezb-i-Islami movement of Hekmatyar, who has called for holy war against the Americans and who is suspected of involvement in a recent car bombing that killed 30 people in Kabul.

Last week, tribesmen on the Pakistani side of the border refused to give up eight al-Qaida suspects seeking shelter in their village. Pakistani army troops then shelled the remote village of Jani Khel and arrested several clerics.

The villagers say the eight men were members of the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan, not al-Qaida.

Nearly 600 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from 38 countries are being held by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and several hundred more are in custody in Afghanistan. Information gleaned from those suspects has lead to other arrests around the world and helped the international intelligence community learn much about al-Qaida's operations.

Still, experts say the knowledge may be of little use.

Mulvenna, the counterterrorism expert, believes the war so far has yielded the possibility for three different kinds of future attacks: acts carried out by individuals who are not members of al-Qaida but are sympathetic to the cause; so-called "franchised attacks" by other groups who may have received some previous help from al-Qaida and "boutique attacks" planned more than a year in advance by operatives trained and financed by al-Qaida.

"That's the new world of the Muslim jihadists and al-Qaida is only a part of it" he said.